Reminder: Crucial Meeting Tonight - July 14th

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Message from President, Billy Imandt

Tonight we will be holding what might be the most important meetings of your career at Supreme Court, Central Jury courtroom from 5:30 - 7:30. First meeting will be an informational meeting regarding the contents of the Memorandum of Agreement (proposed contract) that was voted by the Board of Directors to be presented to the COBANC membership for a ratification vote.

The second meeting is as a result of a petition filed to overturn the decision of the Board of Directors. The petitioners do not want the contract to be presented to the membership for a ratification vote because they feel it is not adequate enough.

There will be a Yes or No vote at this meeting. YES -petitioners prevail - the Board of Directors vote to present the contract IS OVERTURNED and the contract does NOT go to the membership for a vote, or NO - petition is voted down and the contract DOES go to the membership for a ratification vote.

If you have strong feelings about this topic it is critical that you do everything you can to attend this meeting. The future of COBANC will be determined at this meeting.

As you may or may not know, based on the latest, very important information, that being Judge DeFiore's edict to NOT pay retirees retroactive pay which would also cause their pensions NOT to be adjusted up, I am in support of this contract going to the members for a ratification vote. The decision to keep on fighting against almost insurmountable odds, where the fact finder and the Legislature do not have to give, or even address retro to retirees (because they are no longer members of COBANC), is too important for me to make on my own without the membership telling me to do so. Note, it was taken off the table but we were able to negotiate and hold on to retirees retro in this proposed contract - this time.

We also were able to get a very small financial increase to our health and welfare fund, which I will asking the Health and Welfare committee to pass right back to the membership through an increase in our Medical-Prescription reimbursement. And, we were able to negotiate the amount of Employee Organizational Leave (EOL - union time) we need to bring our Executive Board members into the office more than the ½ day a week that most (except the Treasurer) get now, so I can stop playing "whack-a-mole" by scrambling from one emergency to another while trying to secure better benefits, get staffing restored, handle discipline issues, get our titles upgraded and all the other big item things a President has to do, because I am alone in the office more than half the time. The EOL time will also provide for more Delegate meetings per year and our committees, which have been almost dormant because of the lack of EOL, will become fully functional entities.

This democratic process, spelled out in our constitution and By-Laws, will be the direction that COBANC goes into the future with. I want everyone to know that I will be bound by this decision and will move forward, as expeditiously as possible, in the direction that this meeting takes us. There will be no shenanigans of me trying to sneak this in another way if the petitioners prevail, and, if they do not, I will do everything I can, not let a minority of people stop the ratification process.

This is it members. It's time to get out of your comfort zone, do everything you can to attend this meeting, and vote for what you think is the best path for you and for COBANC as a whole. Your future is at stake.